The invention generally relates to tracking a server request.
The current prevailing architectural model for server-side applications is based on the reactive principle in which the server performs some work in response to receiving an external request from a requesting party and then communicates a response (i.e., the result) to the requesting party. A major indicator of server performance is the server request latency, which is the time that elapses from the time at which the server receives the request until the time at which the server provides the response.
A performance analyst typically is interested in such factors as which particular server requests take relatively long times to execute and the internal processing details for these server requests, for purposes of understanding and pinpointing the root causes of the delays.
A conventional server request may spawn several ancillary requests in that for purposes of fulfilling the request, the initially contacted server may communicate additional requests to other servers. Such cross-server communications typically complicate the diagnostic analysis in that many components are involved and may interject corresponding problems that contribute to the overall latency in responding to the initial server request.